Thich Nhat Hanh on Suffering

I saw a wonderful quote by the Zen Buddist Thich Nhat Hanh that is just a beautiful illustration to me right now (emphasis mine):

If you tarnish your perceptions by holding on to suffering that isn’t really there, you create even greater misunderstanding. Reality is neither pleasant nor unpleasant in and of itself. It is only pleasant or unpleasant as experienced by us, through our perceptions. This is not to deny that earthquakes, plagues, wars, old age, sickness, and death exist. But their nature is not suffering. We can limit the impact of these tragedies but never do away with them completely. That would be like wanting to have light without darkness, tallness without shortness, birth without death, one without many. One-sided perceptions like these create our world of suffering. We are like an artist who is frightened by his own drawing of a ghost. Our creations become real to us and even haunt us.

This is a quote and an illustration that I want to hold on to– especially the first and final sentences. How many times do we hold anger or other negative emotions toward another based on something that we think we know? How many times is an argument with a loved one based only on a dialog in our head, rather than on the positive outcome possible or the reality of the loved one’s emotions or motivations?

I’ve been dealing periodically with this very issue all my life– as I’m sure most of us have. Sometimes I’ll find myself holding a grudge toward another whom I love– based on something that I percieve as happening, or based on my egocentric self-assurances that I know their hidden motivations.¹ Rather than detail any of these things that are so close to home, I’ll illustrate with another person’s situation. A situation which serves as both comedy and as proof that others are in the same boat as me.

Lia Hollander had a great post recently on getting a tattoo when she was 18 and hiding it from her parents:

I hid it from my parents for years, hiding it under clothing, and constantly having dreams that I had been exposed. When I finally got up the courage and told my Mom, my anti-tattoo, Mom, she had said:

“Oh, that’s pretty. I’ve been thinking it would be nice to get one on my ankle.”

So now, I have a new memory. A memory of walking around Capital Lake in Olympia, WA with my 14 year old niece laughing our asses off at the silliness of assuming you know everything about a person.

And that’s just what I– what we– often do. We assume that we know what a person is thinking, what their motivations are. We assume this, and build a perception that becomes a replacement for reality.

I assume this and generate my own picture of a ghost based on that assumption, often painting a long dialog to fill in the picture– a dialog that is wholly different than the one I would have with that person if I were not so “monkey-minded”.

Thank you Thích Nhat Hanh, thank you Lia, and thank you to all my loved ones who– whether they know it or not– have lived with my monkey minded paintings.

I’ll try to be better about that.

1. Yeah, these self-assurances are pretty much always wrong. [↩]

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